


Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

by CedanyTheBold



Category: Wolverine (Movies)
Genre: And has a happy dream, Gen, Logan has a heart, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-06 22:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10345626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CedanyTheBold/pseuds/CedanyTheBold
Summary: On the way to Eden, Logan realizes that he wants Laura to have the life that he was robbed of. Drabble-y sort of thing involving Logan's thoughts and nightmares.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Logan and poetry. Not exactly the first combination that would automatically come to mind. But the title just kind of popped into my head and the rest kind of followed. It doesn't really have anything to do with the story. 
> 
> "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May" is the opening line of Robert Herrick's poem, "To the Virgins, to make much of Time.", which reads as follows:
> 
> Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,  
> Old Time is still a-flying;  
> And this same flower that smiles today  
> To-morrow will be dying.
> 
> The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,  
> The higher he's a-getting,  
> The sooner will his race be run,  
> And nearer he's to setting.
> 
> That age is best which is the first,  
> When youth and blood are warmer;  
> But being spent, the worse, and worst  
> Times still succeed the former.
> 
> Then be not coy, but use your time,  
> And, while ye may, go marry:  
> For having lost but once your prime,  
> You may forever tarry.
> 
>  
> 
> Yeah, I realise this is hilariously unfitting for a Wolverine fic. Probably.

 Logan’s eyes flew open as a searing pain ripped its way through his chest. He had nearly fallen asleep at the wheel, somewhere in the middle of what looked like a desert. How the hell had they gotten this far? He could barely remember staggering out of the clinic, the doctor shouting after him. _Sir, you need to get to a hospital!_

Fuck the hospital. Time was running short. For him and for Laura. He stopped the Jeep and sank back in his seat, trying unsuccessfully to catch his breath. A voice piped up beside him.

“What?” he asked.

“Let me drive,” Laura insisted. “You need to rest.”

“Are you fucking—no, you’re not driving!” he tried to protest. But the girl wasn’t having it. Almost without effort she crawled over him and shoved him roughly into the passenger’s seat. He scoffed. How had he gotten so weak that a kid could push him around like that?

“Rest,” she said, as the car jolted into motion. It wasn’t long before he dozed off again.

**************************

There wasn’t much variety in Logan’s dreams. Either people were doing horrible shit to him, or he was doing horrible shit to them. People he loved, people he trusted, his family had died by his hand or because of something stupid he had done.

_You’re an animal, Logan. You were then and you are now._

Except this time he wasn’t. Hell, he wasn’t Logan, or Wolverine, or even Weapon X. He was…

_James._

God, what a weight off his shoulders. He was a boy again. A scrawny, sickly, lonely, but entirely _human_ little boy. It was bliss. His mutation hadn’t reared its ugly head, he hadn’t killed anyone. He was an innocent with two best friends and they had the most wonderful days together.

And then he had only one friend. And his life was uprooted.

And soon there were none and he lived all alone in the woods.

He was so completely goddamned _feral_.

He watched himself go from the little boy called James, to the man called Logan, to the inhuman abomination known as Wolverine. What had started out as an unusually pleasant dream soon devolved into one of his typical nightmares. The operating table. The pain. The horror of what he had become, what he had done with his life, when he could have been so much more. He could have been the greatest force for good the world had ever known. Instead, he had become a monster.

He had wasted so many years.

***********************************

Vaguely aware that the car had stopped, Logan stumbled groggily onto the rough terrain. In his younger days this wouldn’t have given him any trouble, but what with whatever the hell was going on with his healing factor, well…

He could hear Laura calling to him from some distance and looked up.

 _There’s no fucking way I’m going to be able to make it up those stairs_ …he thought, before hitting the ground with a dusty thud.

**************************************

He woke up again only to be surrounded by kids. _Mutant_ kids. The first he or anybody had seen in nearly twenty years.

 _So Laura isn’t the only one…_ The thought gave him more hope than he cared to admit. A new generation to carry on the legacy of people he once knew as friends. But they were still kids, and he knew without asking that they had already seen some shit. The video Gabriela had left had shown him that. The staff had been told to treat these kids not like people, but like things, experiments to be used and toyed with and thrown away if they weren’t up to snuff.

A low growl erupted in his throat as a memory danced at the edges of his mind, but he couldn’t quite place it.

He wouldn’t remember until he saw them later that night around the campfire, laughing and sharing food. They looked so… _happy_. He had been like that once, he knew, although he didn’t remember it. He must have been.

All those years he spent with the X-men, fighting against people trying to claim that all mutants were dangerous from the get-go. These kids were living proof that they were wrong.

“And some have evil thrust upon ‘em,” he quipped to himself, turning away from the window. He only wished he could actually remember what innocence felt like.

****************************

Laura didn’t seem afraid when he woke with a start for what seemed the millionth time this week. She was just staring at him. Something in her eyes told him she understood.

“Did you have a nightmare?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah…I guess…sort of.”

“I have nightmares too. People hurt me.”

“Well, mine are different.” He hesitated before deciding that she probably already knew. “I hurt people.”

“I hurt people too,” she said quietly.

“Go back to sleep,” he ordered gently, surprisingly more so than he thought himself capable of.

She was right. She did hurt people. But unlike him, she didn’t allow it to define her entire being. She was still just a kid, and she deserved a chance at a life he never had. She deserved to be happy and carefree for a little while longer.

He decided, then and there, that if he was going to die, the last thing he would do would be to make that possible.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably end up fixing this at some point, either adding to it or taking stuff out as this is my first X-men fic and I'm still in pretty unfamiliar territory.


End file.
